‘We have to come together.’ Ossoff pushes to pass bipartisan toxic exposure bill for veterans
During a stop in Columbus Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said he’s part of a major bipartisan push to expand VA health care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A vote on the SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act could come as early as next week, Ossoff said.
The legislation will grant more extensive health coverage to veterans with conditions related to toxic exposure. The original bill passed the House of Representatives in March, and the new bill, if passed by the Senate, would then head back to the House.
Ossoff said he is working closely with Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) and other Republicans to get the bill passed. Tester, who chairs the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and ranking member Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said in a joint statement that the bipartisan agreement will give all generations of toxic-exposed veterans their “earned health care and benefits under the Department of Veterans Affairs for the first time in the nation’s history.”
“We have to come together and look after those who have served. This can’t be a partisan issue,” Ossoff told reporters. “We’ve got to come together not as Democrats and Republicans but as Americans to take care of those who have been in harm’s way (and) who have made sacrifices in our national defense.”
The legislation would expand VA health care eligibility to post-9/11 combat veterans, which include an estimated 3.5 million toxic-exposed veterans. It also adds 23 burn pit and toxic exposure-related conditions to the VA’s list of service presumptions.
The bill is one of several that Ossoff is working on related to veterans’ health care. Others include:
- legislation to ensure combat-disabled veterans get full retirement pay and disability benefits
- improving the Veterans Crisis Line, a 24/7 suicide prevention hotline for military veterans
holding the VA accountable and increasing congressional oversight to ensure IT breakdowns don’t result in worse service for veterans
improving rural veterans’ access to VA services.
“We can never do enough for them. We can never do enough for their families, our military families,” Ossoff said.
Ossoff later spoke at an event at the Tubman Museum in downtown Macon, covering similar topics.
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 2:14 PM.